# What did people think clouds were before the scientific explanation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 22, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675 "2025-05-22T17:19:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/61 "2025-05-25T06:49:04Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > So if you had a .scientific mind , like Aristotle, how could you not notice that there’s something wrong with your theory of only 4 elelements.? But today we believe there are 92 natural elements, even though there are a lot more than 92 different types of substances in the world. Is there something wrong with our theory of only 92 elements? The explanation is the same: classical philosophers thought that everything was a combination of different amounts of the 4 elements. Although it was only later, with the development of alchemy, that this became less philosophical and more practical, as the idea arose that we could a change (transmute) a substance by manipulating the amount of each element contained in it. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/62 "2025-05-25T14:02:46Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > Their use was more similar to our use of “phase state”. Thanks! ignorance fought. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/63 "2025-05-27T16:34:42Z")
> [@smithsb](#): > > High-pressure steam is invisible. What you see as “steam” in everyday situations is actually water vapor that has cooled and condensed into visible droplets. The point though, is that in past times whenever people encountered steam, it was actually water vapour. Even today, unless you work with industrial processes, you will encounter water vapour wherever you encounter steam, because when it is released into the environment, the air cools enough of it relatively fast that vapour is visible. The more critical thinkers back then may have noticed - “Oh, look, the first inch or so being expelled from the kettle spout is invisible” and thus deduced the idea of condensation with lower temperature - which point would be reinforced by fog, and by mist lying low on a dewy field or warm pond in the cool morning twilight. > [@Pleonast](#): > > It’s because your connotation of the word “element” is different than their connotation of the word. Their use was more similar to our use of “phase state”. Or more likely, over-all categories, the way we use “metal” and “gas” and “oil” and “frozen” ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2025, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/64 "2025-05-27T22:37:13Z")
I should also add - in the category of ancient folk an their knowledge - that no doubt there were just as many simpletons in the Goode Olde Days. However, respect for elders, knowledge passed by elders, and tradition helped keep things going. In general, when it came to change, old societies were resistant to change for a simple reason. What had worked so far provided them with food and shelter. Asking a society to make a significant change carried a risk, unless there was an obvious crisis. Progress happened slowly. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/65 "2025-05-28T00:10:33Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > I stand by my premise that we are the degenerate offspring of a once-brilliant species who lived cleverly and sustainably for hundreds of thousands of years, up until now. Romanticizing of prehistoric humans as living an Eden-like existence [is misplaced](https://www.coldtakes.com/was-life-better-in-hunter-gatherer-times/). > [@](#): > > …“adapting to” an environment simply means becoming good at competing with others to reproduce in that environment - you could be fully “adapted” to your environment and still frequently be hungry, diseased, violent, hierarchical, sexist, and many other nasty things that we regularly see from animals in their natural environments. If they were fortunate enough to escape extreme hazards of disease and malnutrition in infancy and childhood, hunter-gatherers still on average lived markedly shorter lives than modern humans in developed countries. This is getting a bit far away from cloud interpretation. ☁ ⛈ 👀 ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/66 "2025-05-28T21:14:31Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > If they were fortunate enough to escape extreme hazards of disease and malnutrition in infancy and childhood, hunter-gatherers still on average lived markedly shorter lives than modern humans in developed countries. I don’t romanticize them. I envy them though. I think of our ancestors as people who solved species-survival problems enormously better than we are doing. We have made our own end times. You can’t get any more ecologically destructive than we have become. Even nuclear war wouldn’t be more destructive than the trajectory we are right now. I also do not denigrate the wisdom of a species which made glorious art 20,000 years ago, and managed to feed and clothe and shelter themselves perfectly well for many millennia without any of our technological ‘wonders’. I’m sure they knew everything needful about the water cycle. Obviously. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/67 "2025-05-28T21:58:09Z")
Nonsense. They simply lacked the numbers (and tech) to wreck the whole planet at once. Unlike us. They generally left heedless _local_ devastation wherever they wandered from. Just like us. And desertified and salinified formerly verdant agricultural areas from the day they invented / discovered agriculture. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/68 "2025-05-28T22:30:37Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > It’s interesting how Chinese word for air 空氣 _kōngqì_ (Ancient Chinese _khōng khïi_) is a compound of the characters for ‘empty’ and ‘steam’, coined to form terminology for an abstract concept. It was borrowed by other languages attuned to Chinese philosophy: Japanese 空氣 _kūki_ , Korean 공기 _konggi_, Vietnamese _không khì_. Air is basically steam minus the steam, i.e. air is the medium in which steam can exist. A simpler explanation is that the character 氣 means “air” (and can also mean gas, vapour, energy, life force, spirit, etc., in various contexts). In order to avoid ambiguity in a language with a lot of homophones, it is extremely common for Chinese words to be written with two characters (analogous to how English speakers with the pin/pen merger will say “ink pen” for “pen”). In this case the character for “empty” or “sky” is used to disambiguate, so 空氣 means “sky air” or “air”. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/69 "2025-05-29T00:11:02Z")
Words for air in various languages are usually loanwords from one of four languages with philosophical traditions: Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, or Chinese. Many European languages, like English, borrowed from Greek _aer._ The Islamic world borrowed Arabic _hawá_, the Indic world borrowed Sanskrit _vayu_, and the Confucian world borrowed Chinese _空氣_. Natural philosophy, including science, starts from concrete tangible phenomena, and derives abstract concepts based on those. It doesn’t make up abstract concepts out of nothing, but begins from data known from tangible phenomena. Starting with the physical and working from the ground up is stereotypically the Aristotelian method of philosophy, contrasted with the Platonic approach that works top down starting with the ideal world. Science derives from the former, gnosticism from the latter. Steam is the most tangible and perceptible form of vapor, not only for its heat and capacity for work and sound, but also for the mist of water droplets visually accompanying it. How did the primitive character for _qi_ 氣 start out? It’s a picture of a kettle of water over a fire. How was the slightly abstract concept of “air” first conceived by the earliest minds? Why is there such a striking pattern of languages borrowing the word for air from languages of philosophical traditions? Starting from tangible phenomena, I think “empty steam” is a very elegant, almost poetic, expression for the medium in which steam exists. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/70 "2025-05-29T23:10:05Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > and managed to feed and clothe and shelter themselves perfectly well for many millennia without any of our technological ‘wonders’. Yeah those pesky technological “wonders” like medicine and healthcare. Who cares if they died from trivial reasons, they didn’t have computers so there’s was a better time to be alive. 🙄 ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/71 "2025-05-30T01:19:47Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Yeah those pesky technological “wonders” like medicine and healthcare. Who cares if they died from trivial reasons, they didn’t have computers so there’s was a better time to be alive. 🙄 You don’t get it, and I’m tired of trying. I’ll give up now. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/72 "2025-05-30T14:18:58Z")
I have it on good authority that Hal \_Briston’s great great great great great great grandpappy thought they were sky sheep. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/73 "2025-05-30T16:02:37Z")
That was really baaad! ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/74 "2025-06-03T11:45:53Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > If they were fortunate enough to escape extreme hazards of disease and malnutrition in infancy and childhood, hunter-gatherers still on average lived markedly shorter lives than modern humans in developed countries. > > This is getting a bit far away from cloud interpretation To finish up on the tangent, ISTM there was a whiff of “what the bleep do we know”? Most of those fancy IT types wouldn’t know where to begin weaving a basket! It’s good that in the modern world we specialize. It optimizes output to massively increase comfort and safety. It’s not optimal for everyone to learn how to forage just in case of a one in a billion scenario. And if this society crumbles we will learn all that stuff all over again. Our focus right now should be in not allowing society to crumble. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675/75 "2025-06-03T13:24:11Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > To finish up on the tangent, ISTM there was a whiff of “what the bleep do we know”? Most of those fancy IT types wouldn’t know where to begin weaving a basket! I think it’s also the view that today, we learn (almost) everything from a book or a class, and figure there’s so much to learn that nobody could ever figure it ut on their own. We rely on specialized experts to tell us. But then all we have to do is look at assorted internet chat sites to see just how old fashioned knowledge worked. Someone knew something, told the people around them, and it spread. People learned what they had to know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-people-think-clouds-were-before-the-scientific-explanation/1018675.md?page=3)